


Further Enquiries

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Picaresque-verse [8]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-10
Updated: 2007-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-02 23:06:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity
Summary: As solicitous and honorable as Shaftoe and Sparrow were with their royal passenger Indilla– I can't help feeling that they had gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick. Here, the women get a little of their own back...This story takes place the day after "An Inquiring Mind", and features Tess's OFC Indilla. See what happens to original characters? They get Fic written about them!





	Further Enquiries

**Author's Note:**

> posted to LiveJournal by dharma_slut in 2007, ported to AO3 by Gloria 12 years later

There is a blue sea, a blue sky wisped with cumulous clouds. There is the sun just beginning the lazy downward slide into a swift tropical evening, and there, set like a black corundum gem in the azure, is the Black Pearl gliding on a north-easterly course. There is her Captain, a louche, svelte creature all bombast and fluttering hands, stepping up to the wheel to relieve the steersman. Who, it seems, is a woman, peeling the leather grips away from her hands, flexing her wrists, shaking out the stiffness between her shoulders and smiling— less at Jack Sparrow than at the tall ship she’s been intimate with these past four hours.

“A crossing wind,” Jack comments, watching the boom’s swing, the sails rippling.

“Yeh, dat wind been teasin’ at her all today,” Anamaria confirms. “She wan’ go port way— I tell her no, she don’ like fe dat.” Her brown hand strokes the wheel, right beside Jack’s olivine one. The long tarry fingers slide warm over hers and the ship quivers under the combined caress. “But she behave herse’f for me. She good girl.”

“Aye she is that,” Jack concurs. “My Pearl is a fine lady.”

“You good girl, Miss Pearl,” Anamaria murmurs to the ship. Jack tightens his grip on hers in sympathy with the moment.

Tall and bright, Jack Shaftoe is coming— like a man on a string, she thinks scornfully— towards his mate Jack Sparrow. His blue eyes noting the closeness between the only woman on the crew and the only man in his life. Anamaria relinquishes the wheel, wanting to slip off before that bubble of privacy is constructed right in her face. But Shaftoe isn’t alone, either. Indilla, her shining straight hair floating as the winds shift, trots at his side, one tiny hand swallowed within his massive one, and Anamaria can feel Jack’s shift of humour seeing this as well, but— where is he shifting to, exactly? Anyone in their right mind would drop that paw the moment Sparrow’s black eye were on them; Indilla however, only glows even brighter. And here’s Jack, turning from the wheel, taking her other hand, sliding his arm about her shoulder and thence down to her slender waist (Anamaria can’t help noticing the lovely curve of her hips) and the little woman looks up from one to the other of the men that cocoon her, smiling as fresh and innocent and gay as a daisy.

“Well, love,” the Captain says, “Are we all right and in order?” She nods several times, like a happy child. “Off you go then!” His hand describes arabesques denoting the far horizons. Indilla willows away. Jack’s capriole ends at Shaftoe’s waist, and his body pivots the both of them, and there Captain Jack Sparrow stands in the place of glory; one hand on his beloved ship and t’other on his beloved man.

Anamaria follows the willow off the deck, swearing under her breath. Why, oh Lord, must she be sailin’ on a ship crewed by buggers and madmen?

“You tell me dat!” she says sternly to the sky. The bland countenance Mona Lisas back down at her.

“Anamaria, what?” Indilla’s soft voice. The woman— no matter that her size and her manner speaks of girlishness, they are of an age— Indilla, that is, has turned back with a face full of concern, and her habitual puzzlement.

“I ask the Lord fe gimme some _ease_.” Anamaria says, and laughs. “I left me a nice boy in Tortuga, and fe what, I wan’ know!”

“Fee wha?” Indilla’s limited command of English cannot keep up with Anamaria’s Bahamian accent which slips towards a deep patois when she is in any way upset. She comes up with hands outstretched; Anamaria shies away, thinking of her grubby hands dirtying those slim, soft ones with their clean and straight nails— sees, just in time, the hurt blossoming in the amber eyes, and lets Indilla capture them.

“So what you up to wit’ Captain an’ him fancy-man?“ She tries to regularize her speech somewhat for the visitor’s sake. “Dey mus’ know better den fe get busy wit' you.”

“Jackshaftoe, Jacksparrow, they… ” and a little frown appears between the soft black eyebrows. “I do not think… I not… Ah!” Indilla is frustrated beyond measure herself, and launches into a torrent of foreign gabble, complete with gestures that take Anamaria’s hands with them— until Anamaria is chuckling helplessly feeling her arms being jerked and swooped about like this.

Indilla slows and smiles. “I thank you for listen.” She nearly giggles— and Anamaria realizes that in the time she has been aboard, the little Princess has rarely laughed. Not since that first day, come to that, when glowering Danny’d towed her into Anamaria’s little space wearing nothing but a silk petticoat and a few bangles. Anamaria had felt, that day, that the sweetly bobbing breasts were sunshine coming down into the darkness. But still, the men on this ship didn’t need to be tantalized like that, so Anamaria had coaxed her into something more respectable.

“You unnastan’ Missy,” she says now. “You don’t have to go play no games wit’ dem.”

“I _want_ play,” Indy says. “They say… no touched?”

“Dose men be pooftah,” Anamaria snaps. “How you gona get satisfaction dat whey girl, I ask?”

“My sisters… ”

Anamaria is prepared to offer sympathy for a homesick heart, but in the context of this odd conversation with its half-understood declarations and halting, cross-purposed questions, she wonders if homesickness is not _quite_ the reason Indilla’s eyes are so teary-bright.

“You wan’ go below now? Come 'long, Missy,” she says now, and draws the woman along the narrow corridors to the miniscule cabin that she defends against all comers, except right now, with Indilla sharing it. Shutting the door behind them plunges the cranny into near-dark. Anamaria lights a lanthorn, digs behind the chest, and pulls out a dark bottle. Wordlessly, she pours rum into her only tin cup, and passes it to the girl, who slugs it back easily— harem life, it appears, offers plenty of practice in indolent drunkenness. Anamaria raises the bottle directly to her lips, and is forestalled by the dainty hand laid on her arm. Indy takes the bottle away from her, pours into the cup and offers it in both hands, in a kind of dance. And when Anamaria tries to take it, those hands do not leave the battered vessel, but guide it up to her lips, gently tipping it against her mouth. There is a short tussle for control until Anamaria, with a mental shrug, simply opens her mouth and lets herself be ministered to.

“Thus, we do.” Amber eyes gleam in the semi-dark.

“You sistahs, eh?”

“We do… ” Indilla tugs her down to sit on the floor, the cradling Pearl rolling gentle and easy in the cross-swell. “No hammockses… All on floor, cloths… everything is soft… color… ”

“Now, see, Missy— we can do somet'ing ‘bout dat.” Anamaria reaches to a chest and pulls out swaths of heavy silks meant for her own sisters. Orchids, peacock and flames shimmering and the tiny space is magicked into a bower. Indilla murmurs with delight as the soft heavy stuffs roil about her, raises the swaths to her cheek, shutting her doll-lashed eyes in delight. Anamaria, grinning at her hostessing success, pulls the burlap sack off of the hammock above her. “Go on, you can sit on it.” and lofts it to Indilla— and freezes momentarily, afraid of some social faux-pas. Indilla catches it, though. She shifts her body onto it, confidingly close.

"I give you drink more.” Anamaria is prepared for the cup to the lips, but Indilla’s other arm is supporting the back of her head, encouraging her to let it go heavy and limp— her understanding comes faster this time, and Anamaria experiences the strange sensation of “being done for” as her mother used to say with a shrug of disdain for anyone so helpless.

“I t’ink I know what you get up to wit’ you sistahs,” Anamaria says with an effort. Indilla’s eyes are very close, very confident.

“No one more is there...” Six women, their servants and their eunuchs. A closed society. Indilla’s older sisters, certainly, had experienced the pleasure of a man before they were sequestered. Indy herself had been at the cusp of womanhood. A dearth of men does not mean an end to the body's need. Forced inwards, the Princesses made the best of their lot, and lavished their love and their lusts on each other and their women servants. Passionate alliances, lover’s quarrels, jealousies all aswirl in that whirlpool, the currents made fiercer by the confinement. These things Indilla manages to impart with the few words at her command, by gestures and dumb-show, and Anamaria begins to understand just exactly how wrong everyone’s notions have been about this creature. Innocent? Perhaps in one or two _trifling_ ways that might _possibly_ include the sight of a man- and, Anamaria is given to understand, Jackshaftoe, Jacksparrow, presented her that pleasure just the yesterday past— but only the sight.

More rum is called for. Indilla reaches for the cup. Anamaria is inspired to return the kind gesture, and Indilla gasps and laughs as aromatic rum rolls down the front of her gown.

“Oh, Missy, so sorry!” Anamaria is mortified, but Indilla laughs again, and fends off Anamaria’s attempts to blot the dark stain. She scrambles to her knees instead and pulls the heavy stuff over her head— “ It warn’t so much!” Anamaria protests— and follows up by untangling herself from the shift as well. There is a faint smudge of charcoal that leads from Indilla's belly-button to the dark triangle of her pubes. She shakes out her hair, stretches her arms.

“You, Anamaria?”

“I don’ get up to dis,” Ana demurs, but she already knows where this is going, and anyway, the anger burning in her at the stupidity of men in general impels her to this conspiracy. She pulls her shirt over her head. The lissome, creamy little body slides into her arms.

Indilla’s hands are warm on her breasts, and oh, so very knowing, And Indilla’s fierce, greedy mouth is even warmer, and dear Lord, even more knowing, with none of the gentleness Ana would have expected if she’d time to think about it at all. Indilla’s tongue demands entrance, exploring the nooks and crannies of her mouth, bringing it alive in a way Ana hasn’t felt since Tortuga. And a lively little hand slides into her breeches, fingers press knowingly against her little bud, and Anamaria is borne floorwards with the unaccustomed weight of another woman over her. Her hands cup an arse that is softer, fuller than any she’s held before, and she can feel the hard muscle underlying when one thigh shifts over to nudge between her own, bringing a solidity to bear on her cooze, giving her something to grind hard against. And her breath hitches and then blasts out, sucked into the voracious mouth as the sweet sensation coalesces into her clitoris, and spasms suddenly slam through her body. And… oh… again.

Indilla pulls her tongue out of Ana’s throat. And smiles. “Thus, we do.”

“Dat so?” Anamaria is waiting for her eyes to roll forward again. The little warm creature snuggles down over her, curving and cosseting, and somehow her breasts do not get in the way in the least— Anamaria supposes this, too is the result of Indilla’s years of Sapphic expertise. The thick curtain of straight, brown-black hair covers her eyes and envelopes her in some foreign perfume. Her chin goes up, entirely without her own volition, as sharp little teeth accompany a pair of heated, sucking lips on a voyage around her earlobe and down to the join of the neck where, dear Lord, they sink in and start a trail of fire burning downward into places that, apparently, have been nothing but tinder waiting for the torch.

Fine; let it burn, let it all burn. She is entirely willing to help Indilla untie the string of her trews, and lift her hips to be rid of them. She is entirely willing to concentrate her entire being into her tits, brought to life by that clever mouth, those knowing hands. She surely has no compunction about writhing on the tangled, crumpled silks, as Indilla's burning mouth, her incendiary hands, stoke those various fires. And far far more than willing to feel the big one, the big fire, burning high, dancing in the wind, the way her hips are levering themselves upwards, with streams of black hair falling over her hips, the little face buried there at the root of her being. Let it burn.

Indilla lets her rest at last, and climbs up to nuzzle into Ana's heaving ribcage.

“What I gon' do fe you, Missy?” Anamaria remembers her manners at last. Dubious in the face of her ignorance, she reaches for one breast and marvels at the contrast between her weather-beaten cocoa hand and Indilla’s satiny cream skin. “You gotta tell me, I don’ know dese tricks,” she adds and grins. Indy tells with her hand over Ana’s, showing her how to press, how to roll the large rosy nipple into stiffness, how to make the girl gasp and squirm, and Ana’s other hand finds out that it knows already— how to slide into the thick hair, how to pull that head back up to Ana’s mouth, which has a few tricks of its own to share. School is in session. The bells are ringing.

***

“P'mission, Captain?” Anamaria calls.

“You needn’t stand on formality, love, come on up!” Jack returns gaily. Then his eyes widen and he ducks— but not fast enough and Ana’s hand connects with his cheek in a solid, meaty thunk that spins him half-way around.

“You bloody stupid _bastahd_!” she shouts, drowning out his yelp. The Captain, nursing his face, flinches away from her upraised hand.

“What've I done now?” he asks plaintively. “By Christ, Ana, can’t you just say something first?”

Ana points a menacing finger at Jack Shaftoe, convulsed in laughter a few feet away. “I got one fe you too, Mistah Shaftoe,” she warns him, and he skips back a few more feet.

“Step up, Shaftoe, and take your medicine like a man.” Jack Sparrow glares.

“Why, because you weren’t quick enough to dodge her? Not too fucking likely, mate!” Shaftoe feints and grabs Ana’s hand just before it connects— and then blinks as her right hand— the one he hadn’t noticed— meets the bones of his left cheek anyway.

“Dat fe you, Fancy-Man.” She shoots him a superior look

Jack Sparrow is crowing with glee now. “Your face, Jack, the look on your face!”

“Is this about Indy?” the blond man asks guardedly. “We didn’t do anything to hurt her, Ana, just ask her!”

“Bout she right anuff!” Anamaria shouts “You t’ink you know everyt’ing ‘bout dat girl, Mistah Shaftoe? Huh? You don’ know anyt’ing!”

“What are you talking about, woman? Didn’t I live with her for two months?”

“I don’ believe dat no mo'.” she says contemptuously. “What happen a you? You, Jack Sparrow, you use ta _know_ fe de womens, an’ so I hear tell ‘bout you too, Mistah Shaftoe.” The two men have lost a little of their mirth now, and are listening with some respect. “You done forget all what you know, ‘cause of you got you other now, I savvy. Use’ be the girls was happy of you comin’ in, now dis Pearl don’t gonna cause so much botheration at the pier. Well, fine wi’ dat, m’boy, but don’ go t’inking you de man fe de lady no mo’.”

The men exchange one of their burning looks, “I have to admit," Sparrow says slowly, “That there may be more than a grain of truth to the indictment at hand.”

“Ana, what are you trying to tell us?” Jack Shaftoe’s bulk manages, somehow, to shrink itself, and his face is that of a miscreant and remorseful child— except for the twitching corner of his mouth and the ever-present spark of devilishness in his (currently) guileless eyes. “What did we miss about Indy?”

“Missy ain’ noways no virgin.” Anamaria folds her arms the better to glare.

“What!” Shaftoe roars. “Who would dare! You ask her, Ana, as gently as you can… Christ, I never thought—“

“There'll be a flogging.” Sparrow’s face has gone dark with rage. "Or a hanging, if she was forced."

“Oh, hush. Ain’t been no mens ‘ceptin’ the fine pair a you.”

The men consider this for a moment.

“We never went… well, inside,” Jack Sparrow says doubtfully. “Could our exertions have inadvertently… torn her maidenhead?” Anamaria rolls her eyes in mounting irritation.

“An’ did you take one _look_ at de quim, boyo? No, I din’ t’ink so. Dat coochie gon’ be too nasty fo’ you dese days.” She spits her disgust on the hot deck. “Fe’ fie. Fe’ _shame_ , Jack Sparrow.” He bridles at this scolding, but looks thoughtful.

“Nay lass, never nasty. Oh, never. Only… Ain’t it interestin’, the paths life leads ye down… ”

“Ana, she’s lived almost her entire life in the hareem,” Shaftoe interposes. “She’s never even heard of— “

“Dat what you t’ink? De girl gotta hear about it? Don’ you know dey gonna fin’ it out all by de’se’f. Don’ need no _tellin’_. Mistah Shaftoe, din’t you never see what was goin’ on in dere— you right in de middle like dat! Dem womens carryin’ on. You mus’ been blind!”

“Aye, well I might have been,” Shaftoe agrees. “I might have been blind, Ana, but, you see, there was someone blocking the view, the whole time.” His sidelong glance towards Jack Sparrow softens her anger a little. Anamaria is as sentimental as the next woman— despite the fact that the next woman normally would be miles away on some spit of land— and she can’t help but feel the romance between these two men. “Hard to see past you,” Shaftoe murmurs. “But, tell me now, what were they doing?“

“Dey was doing _everyt’in_ ,” Anamaria announces with more emphasis than italics can possibly convey.

“The sisters?” Jack Sparrow’s golden grin steals over his visage as he thinks about this. Shaftoe has an introspective look to his face— He is remembering sounds heard in the nights, affections and squabbles witnessed during the days, and assigning new meanings to them.

“An’ who else might dere be, I ask?” Ana says truculently. The incestuous source of Indilla’s fount of knowledge troubles her, no matter how heady the joy of discovery.

“I’ve seen clever carvings of Ivory, an' sometimes of wood, ” Sparrow offers thoughtfully. "Aye, I cn' imagine the royal ladies would have acquired a few such articles. An'honestly, I must reproach myself for such… Obtuseness. Insensitivity. Imperception… ”

“You bloody _Stupid_!”

Jack bows in her direction. “Yes, that too, Ana my love. Well, seeing as she’s no virgin, I suppose we should take her first to a good brothel where she can learn how to be one— for one night at least. To preserve her market value. So to speak.”

“And perhaps we can rectify our error of yesterday.” Shaftoe grins wickedly; “But aside from the matter of her womanly virtue— not much of that, evidently— there’s the matter of… unexpected progeny to think of.”

“You?” Ana is armored in scorn. “You, dat ain’ touch no cooze in _twenny year_ , you gonna do dat? What you got she need?”

“Ana, my love, you know the answer to that question.” Sparrow’s lascivious eyes make his meaning clear— that and his hand stroking the front of his trews. She snorts.

“She gon’ be gettin’ bettah den dat, I cn' tell you.”

“From you, evidently. Welcome to the club of the perverse, my dear.” Sparrow makes his little nodding obesiance. Shaftoe moves up close behind him; the Jacks are within their bubble, but it includes Anamaria at the moment.

“Will you satisfy my curiosity?” Sparrow adds after some reflection.

“You gon’ be sorry you ask dat.” Her white teeth flash in her cocoa face.

“Nonsense, lovie, my intellect is nigh unquenchable.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Jack Shaftoe says dryly and huffs out a laugh at something Jack Sparrow’s hand is doing behind his back

“Come Mister Shaftoe, a man may have more than one appetite. So Anamaria, if you would— and I _swear_ this won’t go no further than we three— pray tell me, has our clever little Indy brought one of these ivory homunculi aboard with her? Or— “ Struck by a new thought, he leans confidingly close— “ Anamaria, was it your own in the first place?”

“No, an’ no.” But she makes a mental note to acquire one from some port or an other. “You know right well she an’ Darius come aboard wit’ the clo's on dey backs an dat’s all.” She looks from the blue to the black eyes, savouring their amused, lubricious puzzlement.

“I gon’ show you what.” Anamaria— her heart beating, oh, beating, at the memory of so recent and so sweet, so wonderful and so new a thing— draws her sleeve up her arm. “You look here,” she says, and folds her thumb inward, curling and closing the fingers around it in a slender fist.

“Well, fuck,” Jack Shaftoe mutters after a long, contemplative pause. "In a manner of speaking."

Sparrow closes his mouth. “All… that?”

The three of them mentally review the tiny body they know, relative to this revelation— Anamaria with lung-bursting triumph, the men with incredulous respect. Sparrow cocks his head, takes this new appendage in hand, attempts to close his long fingers around the bulk the at the base of thumb and palm, slides down and rings her wrist with more success. He leans forward, and inhales deeply. “I smell… Indy.” His moustache grazes her skin, as he moves up the big vein of her wrist. “And here I smell… not Indy?” He pulls back to note the boundary between within and without. “I can match you in _length_ ,“ he comments; “But I fear you have the best of me in _girth_.”

“Yes, an’ dere's anothah t'ing; I nevah—“ Anamaria leans closer and the men draw in towards her— “ I don’ _nevah_ spend too soon!” She leers at the Jacks who are looking back into her face in utter astonishment; the dignified, private woman they knew has been transformed into a strutting waggish rake as grand and as grandiose as themselves.

Jack Sparrow chokes back a chuckle. Shaftoe guffaws, and tries to stifle it. Anamaria giggles, once— and then the three of them are dissolved in hilarity, escalating ever higher, a gleeful celebration of the sweet pleasures of life, love, companionship, as crew members stop to look over at the commotion on the wheeldeck, as Sparrow flings a loving arm around Anamaria, as Shaftoe bestows a comradely buss on her cheek in his delight (tasting Indy there) as Anamaria returns a kiss of fellowship to each, as the many souls aboard the black lady, The Pearl, glide sweetly through the sweet short afternoon, on the deep blue of the Indian Ocean.

~*~

_coda;_

“You can’t stop thinking about it,” Sparrow says wickedly.

Jack Shaftoe doesn’t bother to deny it. “It would _compensate_ for a certain lack, don’t you think?”

“Let’s take a gander, shall we?” Sparrow says, and Shaftoe laughs; “You mean you can’t stop thinking about it— oh, shameless!” He folds his hand into the shape demonstrated that afternoon, and the two men contemplate it in silence.

“Mmm,” Sparrow says speculatively. “It seems a good deal more monstrous on the end of your brawny arm, don’t it?”

“It’s… all around, I’d say, much bigger. Probably do you a hurt,” Shaftoe agrees. “Well, we won’t try this little experiment then.”

A hot breath shivers against his ear, and Jack Sparrow says; “Not this night, at any rate...”


End file.
